The Storm troopers

Julius Strauss joins Spetsnaz as they patrol the shattered streets of the Chechen capital, Grozny

30 April 2004

The first time I saw them up close, they were bristling with guns and grenades and running towards the main entrance of the Dubrovka Theatre in Moscow. "Spetsnaz," said the Russian photographer standing next to me.

It was just before six on a rainy Saturday morning in October 2002. In the concrete building 800 theatregoers had been held hostage for nearly three days after Chechen gunmen stormed the stage.

The rebels wired the theatre's supporting pillars with explosives. Among the hostage-takers were 'black widows' - Chechen women who had become suicide bombers after losing their husbands in the conflict - strapped with plastic explosives.

Negotiations had come to nothing. The separatists' leader had threatened to begin killing hostages that morning.

Then those Spetsnaz soldiers appeared, many wearing gas masks to guard against a powerful sedative gas that had just been pumped into the theatre. We held our breath, waiting for the huge explosion. But it never came.

The Spetsnaz had isolated and killed the leader. The black widows had been knocked out by the gas before they were able to blow the building apart, and each had been killed by a shot to the head.

I broke through the security cordon and watched as bodies were brought out and laid next to each other. Just to my right stood one of the Spetsnaz units that had stormed the building.

So these were the Spetsnaz: crack commandos with a fearsome reputation for ruthless efficiency. Their commanders say they are the best in the world, as highly trained and well equipped as their British counterparts, the SAS, or the US Delta Force. I wanted to take a closer look.

The Spetsnaz are as publicity-shy as their western peers. Under communism the Kremlin refused even to acknowledge the existence of this 'special force', set up in the depths of the Cold War to carry out sabotage work deep behind Nato's lines in the event of a real conflict.

Their fearsome reputation was confirmed during a decade of fighting in Chechnya, where units were accused of torturing and murdering rebels and civilians.

Charges of incompetence were also levelled, after a raid in the Russian town of Budyonnovsk in 1995. When Chechen gunmen took hundreds of civilians hostage in a maternity hospital, a Spetsnaz unit stormed the building. In the melee many civilians, as well as Spetsnaz and rebels, lost their lives. The Chechen leader, the main target, was able to negotiate his escape.

Since the end of the 1990s the special forces have regained some of their former stature, as Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB agent, increased their funding. The Spetsnaz counter-terrorist unit, Alfa, was widely praised for the Dubrovka Theatre raid, even though more than 130 hostages died from gas inhalation.

Arranging to work alongside the Spetsnaz took months of negotiation, through both official and unofficial channels. Eventually, though, I found myself in a borrowed uniform and 5mm haircut landing by helicopter at the Spetsnaz HQ outside the Chechen capital, Grozny.

Ever since 1994, when the Russian army invaded the small Caucasian republic, the Spetsnaz have been at the sharp end of the action. According to the Kremlin, the conflict in Chechnya finished two years ago after a Russian offensive seized Grozny. But away from the TV cameras, it has continued unabated.

The units are based at a high-security regular army camp in Chechnya at Khankala. They are distrustful of Russian regular soldiers, whom they sneeringly refer to as 'Hanses', after the bedraggled, demoralised Germans who failed to seize Moscow in 1941.

At the base I declare myself and produce the letter of introduction I have been given by an officer in Moscow. I am brought before the commander of Unit 8, a colonel who goes by the name of Ded. He is quiet and polite, but exudes suspicion. I am a foreigner and a journalist. I might even be a spy.

Ded, a Ukraine-born officer, is in a minority within the Russian army. Unlike western special forces, Spetsnaz units are made up mostly of conscripts. All Russian men are liable for military service after leaving school.

When I ask to shadow the unit for a week, Ded is reluctant. Journalists have been highly critical of the Russians' behaviour in Chechnya.

For a couple of hours after our first meeting we sit making small talk in a little shelter with no walls. Nearby stands the caravan where Ded lives. "If I wanted I could have a desk job in Moscow. I have a wife and son there and I miss them," Ded says. "But I like to work with my boys.

"The Spetsnaz are the Russian army's magic wand. When a situation is out of control, it's us they send in. If there's a meeting of Chechen field commanders to neutralise, it's us they call. One of our guys is better than 10 ordinary soldiers."

The afternoon is fading, but Ded's suspicions seem as strong as ever. The fate of my assignment hangs in the balance. For a Spetsnaz commander to take in a foreigner is a huge risk. If I am hurt or killed, there will be hell to pay.

Worse, I might write a story depicting the unit as thuggish or incompetent. In the end, Ded puts me through a little test - he invites me to come to his 'banya' with him.

A banya is a traditional bathhouse-cum-sauna-cum-meeting-place where elaborate rituals are observed. That evening in his banya Ded lays on the hospitality - including vodka. And more vodka.

The next morning, staggering under the weight of full body armour, a thick helmet and a paralysing hangover, I am wedged on top of an armoured personnel carrier (APC) speeding towards Grozny. I can remember just one thing clearly from the previous night: Ded saying, as he poured yet another round, "If you betray us it will not be healthy for you. That's not a threat, just a fact."

Ded is not a man to mess with. He is more than just Spetsnaz. He is a Maroon Beret, the elite of the elite.

Mario, 28, also has a maroon beret. He says: "The first time I went into battle, it was like a video game. There was no fear, just adrenaline. I'm happy in the Spetsnaz, and proud. Here we're more than comrades, we're brothers. Who the best soldiers in the world are I can't say, but the conditions that we live and fight in you in the West would consider barbaric."

Chechnya is the most dangerous place a Russian soldier can be sent. Nearly a decade after the war began, accounts of the shootings, bombings and skirmishes rarely make it into the newspapers any more, but an average of three or four Russian servicemen are killed in the republic every day.

As soon as a patrol leaves the relative safety of its base, the soldiers are on high alert. Mokry, a short, heavily-muscled man with dark eyes, is in command.

Mokry joined the Spetsnaz six years ago. Aged 25, he has worked his way up to the rank of lieutenant. On his right arm is a tattoo of a skeleton in a long gown carrying a Kalashnikov. The inscription reads 'Kill 'Em All'. Above his left breast is the Grim Reaper, with 'Special Forces' written underneath in English. "You get a taste for the Spetsnaz and then you start loving it," he says.

As we stand crouching by the APC, Mokry barks an order and the soldiers leap out of the vehicle and run for cover. They lie flat or kneel on one knee, assault rifles to their shoulders, fingers on the triggers, tense as piano wires.

In front of us lie the cratered and shell-splattered remains of Grozny. "This is my first time," says Sasha, a heavyset 18-year-old. "Soon I'll be fighting, but I'm not freaking out."

Two hundred yards away a white Lada with blackened windows rolls to a halt. "That's Kadyrov's guys," Mokry says to me. "They are supposed to be our allies, but if we so much as blink, they'll screw us. The only way with these guys is to hold a grenade against their head. Then they listen." (Akhmad Kadyrov, at the time the Moscow-appointed leader of Chechnya, has since been elected president.)

After a tense stand-off, the situation is defused with face-to-face negotiations between the men in the Lada and the Spetsnaz officers.

It seems that Unit 8 had been ordered to destroy illegal oil wells around Grozny, some of which were controlled by Kadyrov.

Many of the operations that the Spetsnaz might be called upon to perform are relatively routine, but the ultimate operation is a full-scale 'storm'. There is perhaps one such major raid every month or so.

The most famous 'storm' was the one I had watched from a Moscow pavement in 2002. I ask Mario whether he considered it an unqualified success for the Spetsnaz. "It was a brilliant operation," he says. "I know people died, but that was the fault of the doctors. Our only regret was that we were here in Chechnya and couldn't take part."

When they are not on an operation, the soldiers of the Spetsnaz are often to be found working out. Kick-boxing is the mainstay of their physical regime. I watch one fight in the late afternoon between two conscripts, Vladimir and Kostya. They hammer away at each other. Within minutes they are panting softly, their feet and upper arms blotched red.

Weapons drills are another daily feature. One morning Bes, a 19-year-old corporal who has just won his maroon beret, is stripping down a submachine gun the Russians call the 'Cypress'. The day I arrived at the camp Bes had been on a patrol that had come under fire. "It was my first contact," he says proudly. "I was sitting on the APC when suddenly bullets began to hit the metalwork all around me."

However, there are dark rumours about the Spetsnaz. Officially, the treatment of Chechen prisoners, even those suspected of terrorism, is strictly regulated by Russian law. In practice, units are given a high degree of autonomy.

Russian forces in Chechnya have been accused of rape, torture and extra-judicial killings. My questions about allegations of brutality, of torture, are met with shrugs.

During my week with the Spetsnaz, however, I was able to confirm one thing: these soldiers rate as some of the world's toughest. Compared with the American Green Berets I worked alongside in Iraq, they were cooler under fire, less ideological and at least as ruthlessly efficient.

Since Unit 8 was formed it has lost 22 soldiers and officers in combat. At evening roll-call, often held in darkness, the names of fallen comrades are included. A soldier responds, stating where and when the dead lost their lives.

"We always get the body back, even if sometimes we can't show what's left to the family," Ded says. "Then we put up a cross to mark the spot where he died. If the cross is in Chechnya, we rig it with a mine."